Monday Miyashita and Moussaka

“We have moussaka on a Monday…..oo oo oo oo oo”

This is one of our songs for our End of the Year party for parents and other family members. We have been listening to the CD that Shelley made with her and John singing songs and it is such fun to learn in this way. We just sit and play with play dough, do cutting, work on projects etc. and we hear the singing in the background. There is always one of our friends who will sing loudly and join in with the CD. Today it was Mirai. She knows many of the words of the songs and her voice could be heard throughout the day, singing the tunes and words.

It was also Miyashita Monday so we had a busy morning doing exercises and getting ready for the week; the last week of May for 2017 and our school year together in Petals Class. This is a time of closure and many endings; and while we haven’t spoken much about it, our teachers are completing our workbooks with us and organizing our gifts. There are so many things to do throughout the year and this is especially a time filled with pressure, and joy and sadness. The joy is celebrating everything that we have achieved this year and the sadness is that some of our friends are leaving Japan and some are going to new schools. We hope that our connection will always be strong so that when we meet again one day, we will remember this special time in our lives.

On a Monday, we always have a short free play time because we prepare our classroom for gymnastics. We go downstairs to Buds Class to have snack while they are using our classroom for gymnastics. We return to our classroom when they are finished their class with Miyashita sensei. Today we were happy to have some free play time later in the day. Our morning free play time included sensory play with coloured rice in trays and later in the day, it included play dough and the play foam that Meg gave us.

We spent some time with Hisami, looking at our books about doctors and hospitals and working out how to make another machine for our hospital. We noticed that both YeonJae and Dev, had a pipe in their arms that was connected to a machine. There was also a plastic bag, that was filled with a liquid that went through the pipe into their bodies, to make them better. We used black paper and made the buttons and dials out of buttons and coloured foam shapes. The pipe is made from straws. Maybe we can pretend to attach the pipe to our arm if we are the patient in the hospital.

Our teachers try not to waste things as you know, and on Friday night, our mums and dads played a guessing game. They wore a head band with a name on it, which was a secret. They had to guess whose name was on their headbands. Hisami used rubber bands for them and she wanted to take the rubber bands out so that we could reuse them. This was a very good activity for our fine motor skills as we used our fingers and had to pull them out carefully. Luckily, we saved them all! Afterwards Griffin laid them out in a pattern, which made Meg curious. We didn’t realise that rubber bands are circular in shape. You can see many circles on the table.

We pasted the names that we drew on small pieces of paper in our workbooks as well as our shaving cream marbling art together with photos. Some of us have hardly any pages left in our workbooks/portfolios which is reminding us that we are coming to the end of the year. Our teachers will add some pages if we need a few more. We read a fabulous book about “Elmer” the elephant. The book however was written in Hebrew and was called “Bentzi”. We loved the book and pre-empted what would happen to him, when the storm came and the rain; it washed all the bluish grey off him from the blue berries.